THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Egypt's military leaders are under intense international pressure to explain the deaths of more than 20 Christian protesters after the army was accused of deliberately fostering sectarian hatred to disguise a power grab.
Video footage and independent testimony that emerged on Monday called into question army claims that its soldiers acted in self-defence when they killed 26 protesters, the vast majority of them Christian Copts, in central Cairo on Sunday evening.
Although Coptic protesters threw stones at soldiers during the confrontation, a number of witnesses, many of them Muslim, claimed that the army's response was either wholly unwarranted or grotesquely disproportionate.
A number of the dead were crushed to death by an armoured car that ploughed into a group of protesters as they sang hymns and held aloft the Cross, according to several accounts that were given additional credence by the condition of several corpses in a Coptic mortuary.
The soldiers were also accused of opening fire at the protesters, prompting accusations that orders had been given to kill without discrimination.
Coptic leaders yesterday called on their followers to observe a three-day fast, but in many parts of Egypt's Christian community, mourning has already given way to anger. Continue reading and comment » | Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent | Monday, October 10, 2011
